chin turns, shadows flit    
cobble stones murmur - do you?      
the lane forks in two

We know
and to know is to invent,
and to invent is to lie.

Poets deal in beautiful lies,
especially when convinced
we are telling the truth.

Not malicious lies,
not the ones meant
to wound or ****.

Call them
improvements
on reality.

Our charm and power
gestate from our inventions.

We take nothing,
add our souls,
engender words
and only expect awe.

The kind of awe that sends
dresses, skirts or pants
tumbling toward the floor.

The kind of awe that
grows roses in their hearts.

We call that romance,
another invention
that becomes a dance.

Dance with me
and I will whisper
the sweetest lies
I can invent.

You deserve nothing less
than very my best.

Relax, sweet lover.
Don't be afraid.

The lies that
I invent for you
have always been,
and always will be,
true.

  ~mce

"Hell is a place without birds." D.A.*

A tiny bird in my heart sings
that although the time of kisses
is not yet, it will be.
Like Dante, I have always
trusted the wisdom of birds.
   ~mce

We live in an abrupt time
without ancestors.
Those gossamer threads
that bound us to the past
have long ago melted away.
I am a lone man on a bed in a room.
Adjectives do not accrue.
Only your mouth tracing my body
outlines me into reality,
your pretty teeth nip me
into the dangerous present.
And what then shall I give you?
Neither famous nor rich,
I possess only mundane flesh
and a grab bag of words.
These will have to do, lady.
Allow me to adorn you with them:
earrings made of desperate syllables,
a necklace of my broken fingers.
These are the offerings
I place before your body's altar
where I have come to worship
before the magic of your touch.
Only a man on a bed in a room,
everything that is left of me,
waiting with anxious longing
for your mouth to create me again.

No doubt I
could conquer
the living world,
if I could just
get out of this chair
where I sit
enthralled, bemused,
dreaming of your hair.

I don't have time to shape/define this poetry
so take it as it is and know that one day
you'll be pushed into the empty hole
that's not quite hell and more than loneliness
and I won't be sending you postcards because
for some reason yours never found me -
or maybe you just didn't send them.

It's funny 'cause in every kind of situation
I'm always somehow second best, that's all.

I see you sitting
on the red bed
drinking Retsina
against the white wall
where we had
drawn hexagrams,
in your black slip
smiling up at me
in the pellucid
Greek light.

Since that moment,
Forty-five years
have dissolved
like tears
in a hurricane.

You are only a
ghost who smiles
in my memories.

I never thought
I would find another
woman like you,
strong and complete.

But I have travelled
far and long
and like magic,
here she is.

Thank you for saying
that one day
I would know love
because I was worthy.

And you went away,
and  she is here.

Ghosts always
tell the truth.

If you are patient.

Entropy hunts you down;
until around 60,
this remains abstract.
Then, it becomes fact.
"Things fall apart;"
bodies are things.
Hearts and souls
improve with age.
Minds and flesh do not.
Fight the good fight.
You can only delay
inevitable decrepitude.
Every day, a battle
against the inevitable.
War with a grim enemy
that can never give up.
Entropy will hunt you down
Until your walls collapse
and death, relentless,
roars through the breach.